Report: Intel TLC SSD 760p and QLC SSD 660p on the way soon

TechPowerUp reported yesterday that Taiwanese e-tailer Autobuy had listings up for Intel's next-generation SSDs. The SSD 760p and 660p showed up on the site with full specifications. Autobuy has taken the listings down at this time, but the chart below—saved by TPU and reproduced with permission—has the full details on the new drives.

To start off with, the 760p looks to be intended to replace the Intel SSD 750. According to the chart, it will be an NVMe SSD in the M.2 form factor, based on IMFT's 64-layer 3D TLC flash memory. The 760p will come in capacities ranging from 128 GB on up to 2 TB. The given performance figures are impressive: 350K IOPS in 4K random reads, and 280K IOPS on random writes. The supposed sequential performance of the drives isn't bad either, at 3200 MB/s for reads and 1600 MB/s for writes.

Based on the information from Autobuy, the Intel SSD 660p is likewise an M.2 NVMe SSD, but it is purportedly based on QLC memory. That's right gerbils—quad-level cell flash memory. As a refresher, typical SSDs these days use TLC, or triple-level cell flash memory. TLC stores three bits per flash cell, which improves density over single- or multi-layer cells, but also worsens durability and performance compared to MLC.

Intel seems to want to maintain controller-level parallelism for performance, because the 660p will seemingly only show up in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB sizes. If we are to believe the numbers supplied by Autobuy, the 660p's performance isn't as bad as you might fear, either. The listing specs the SSD 660p for 150K IOPS in both 4K reads and writes. It puts down the drives' sequential performance at 1800 MB/s for reads and 1100 MB/s for writes.

There isn't any pricing data available for the 660p, but TigerDirect has listings for the 760p series already. Currently the site is showing the 128 GB 760p for $96, the 256 GB drive for $130, the 512GB drive for $235, the 1 TB drive for $448, and the 2 TB 760p for $893. Those prices and the purported performance put the SSD 760p as a close competitor to Samsung's 960 EVO. We should hear more about these drives soon, so stay tuned.